ABSTRACT
A significant legacy of the Senate Committee on Government Operations (renamed the Committee on Governmental Affairs in the 95th Congress) was a commissioned study by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). Released in April 1977, Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards went a long way toward illuminating what it called "fundamentally different perceptions of the [proliferation] problem." 1 The problem, according to OTA, was reducible to three broad questions: Did alternatives exist to the use of commercial nuclear power reactors to meet global energy needs? Could proliferation risks be removed from the commercial nuclear fuel cycle? Did proliferation really constitute a serious problem for U.S. national security interests?
